TRANSLATIONS

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The other link, 'turtle', leads to a series of pages I thought were necessary in order to be able to put the concept of a calendrical turtle into its proper perspective:

Maya cosmology (ref. Maya Cosmos) defined the present Creation to have occurred on August 13, 3114 B.C.:

"In three magnificent texts at the site of Koba, scribes recorded it as one of the largest finite numbers we humans have ever written. According to these inscriptions, our world was created on the day 4 Ahaw 8 Kumk'u. On this day all the cycles of the Maya calendar above twenty years were set at thirteen - that is to say, the cycles of 400 years, 8,000 years, 160,000 years, 32,000,000 years, and so on, all the way up to a cycle number extending to twenty places (2021 * 1360-day year). In our calendar, this day fell on August 13, B.C. 3114 (or September 20, -3113 in the Julian calendar).

To understand what this means, we need a little scale. The thirteens in this huge number act like the twelve in our cycles - the next hour after twelve is one. Thirteen changed to one as each of these cycles in the Maya calendar was completed, therefore, we have the following sequence:

 

13. 13. 13. 0. 0. 0. 1. 5 Imix 9 Kumk'u (Aug. 14, 3114 B.C.)
13. 13. 13. 0. 0. 1. 0. 11 Ahaw 3 Pop (Sept. 2, 3114 B.C.)
13. 13. 13. 0. 1. 0. 0. 13 Ahaw 3 Kumk'u (Aug.7, 3113 B.C.)
13. 13. 13. 1. 0. 0. 0. 2 Ahaw 8 Mak (May 1, 3094 B.C.)
13. 13. 1. 0. 0. 0. 0. 3 Ahaw 13 Ch'en (Nov. 15, 2720 B.C.)
13. 13. 13. 0. 0. 0. 0. 4 Ahaw 3 K'ank'in (Dec. 23, A.D. 2012)
13. 1. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 10 Ahaw 13 Yaxk'in (Oct. 15, A.D. 4772)
1. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 7 Ahaw 3 Zotz' (Nov. 22, A.D. 154587)

Each of the years, called a tun by the Maya, in these dates is composed of 360 days. If we return to the Creation date with its twenty cycles set at thirteen, we see that it will take 41,943,040,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000 tuns for the highest cycle to change from thirteen to one."

"On the Tablet of the Cross, the Palenque account begins with the birth of First Mother six years before the Creation on 12.19.13.4.0 8 Ahaw 18 Tz'ek (December 7, 3121 B.C.) and five hundred and forty days earlier, the birth of First Father, Hun-Nal-Ye, on 12.19.11.13.0 1 Ahaw 8 Muwan (June 16, 3122 B.C.).

His birth is connected to the Creation day, 4 Ahaw 8 Kumk'u (August 13, 3114 B.C.), when, according to the inscriptions, thirteen cycles ended. The text mentions an action that First Father accomplished on Creation day, but we haven't been able to decipher what it was. However, in the next clause, the Palenque scribes repeated Creation again and described it as 'it was made visible, the image at Lying-down-Sky, the First-Three-Stone-Place'.

Then we learned that five hundred and forty-two days later (1.9.2 in the Maya system, Hun-Nal-Ye 'entered or became the sky' (och ta chan). This 'entering' event occurred on February 5, 3112 B.C. The act of 'entering the sky' is recorded on another extraordinary painted pot.

This pot depicts one of the Hero Twins (One-Ahaw in the Classic texts and One-Hunaphu in the K'iche' Popol Vuh) and a great bird who is trying to land in a huge ceiba tree heavy with fruit. This mythical bird is Itzam-Yeh, Classic prototype of Wuqub-Kaqix, 'Seven-Macaw', of Popol Vuh fame.

In that story, in the time before the sky was lifted up to make room for the light, the vainglorious Seven-Macaw imagined himself to be the sun. Offended by his pride, the Hero Twins humbled hime by breaking his beautiful shining tooth with a pellet from their blowgun. This pot shows One-Ahaw aiming at the bird as he swoops down to land in his tree. As Itzam-Yeh lands on his perch, the text tells us he is 'entering or becoming the sky'.

This particular 'sky-entering' is not the one mentioned in the Palenque text. It is the final event that occurred in the previous creation before the universe was remade. Before the sky could be raised and the real sun revealed in all its splendor, the Hero Twins had to put the false sun, Itzam-Yeh, in his place. If the date on this pot corresponds to that pre-Creation event, as we believe it does, then Itzam-Yeh was defeated in 12.18.4.5.0 1 Ahaw 3 K'ank'in (May 28, 3149 B.C.). After the new universe was finally brought into existence, First Father also entered the sky by landing in the tree, just as Itzam-Yeh did."

"Most of the people in our van took advantage of the interlude to shop at the nearby stalls set up by highland Maya who had come down to Tikal to take advantage of the steady supply of tourists.
 
However, one of our group, Harriet Gillett, a retired physician and an inveterate bird-watcher, had other interests. She noticed a nearby tree hevy with white blossoms and surrounded by a raucous sphere of birds and bees. She climbed out of the van with her binoculars around her neck, and walked over to take advantage of the unexpected opportunity the morning had provided. Our local guide, Francisco Florián, who knew the forest and its creatures in an unusually intimate way, joined her, explaining that the birds came to the tree only early in the morning. The sounds and the odd sight finally drew my attention and I too disembarked from the van and edged closer to the buzzing center of the action.
 
I stared at the screaming birds as they fought for positions among the flowers and the hovering drone of thousands of bees. How beautiful, I thought, and then my gaze happened to settle on the trunk of the tree. It had thorns and it bulged just above the ground. It was a young ceiba tree.
 
(Wikipedia)
 
I already knew that the ceiba tree was the model for the sacred World Tree of the Maya, but I had never seen one in flower when I knew what I was looking at. I was really excited because normally you can't see the blossoms even if you're there when the tree is in blossom. The fully mature trees are hundreds of feet high. and the blossoms are very small. 'It's a ceiba', I chirped and began looking for a branch low enough to see one of the blossoms up close. Joyce Livingstone, a retired teacher, did the logical thing. She bent over, picked up a fallen branch, and held it out for me to see. I was too excited and full of myself to listen. She tapped my arm more insistently and still I didn't hear her. Finally, in frustration, she grabbed my wrist and raised her voice. 'Will you look at these?' she said, waving the branch, and finally I did.
 
What I saw stunned me, for in her hand lay a perfect replica of the earflares worn by the Classic Maya kings. Suddenly I understood the full symbolism of so many of the things I had been studying for years. The kings dressed themselves as the Wakah-Chan tree, although at the time I didn't know it was also the Milky Way.
 
(Wikipedia)
 
The tzuk [partition] head on the trunk of the tree covered their loins.
 
 
The branches with their white flowers bent down along their thighs, the double-headed ecliptic snake rested in their arms, and the great bird Itzam-Yeh stood on their head. I already knew as I stood under the young tree in Tikal that the kings were the human embodiment of the ceiba as the central axis of the world. As I stood there gazing at the flowers in Joyce's hand, I also learned that the kings embodied the ceiba at the moment it flowers to yield the sak-nik-nal, the 'white flowers', that are the souls of human beings. As the trees flowers to reproduce itself, so the kings flowered to reproduce the world." (Maya Cosmos)
 
(Wikipedia)

The thorns on the trunk of the ceiba look like breasts with nipples, and I remember statements about the difficulty in determining the sex of old gods. They were Father/Mothers according to the Maya, and in Polynesia the moon changed her sex from female to male.

A footnote in Maya Cosmos:

"William Hans puts it this way: 'As a man kul ('sits') in his house, a bird 'alights' on its k'u' 'nest', and a saint resides in a k'u', 'shrine', the evil k'u 'alights, perches' in the south corner.

This stationary aspect is what makes it possible for DC (his shaman informant) to locate the thing on one day and peform a heetz lu'um ceremony only several weeks later, without fear that it has moved. There is a cultural premise that all animates, including spirits, occupy stable places from which they occasionally move ..."

The perennial stability of the sun, I think, should be used when giving him a name. Maybe Metoro's kuukuu implies intense stability:

Aa1-9 Aa1-10 Aa1-11 Aa1-12
e moa te herehua ka hora ka tetea ihe kuukuu ma te maro ki te

And Itzam-Yeh could not be removed from the ceiba, of course, without taking 'grave' measures.

In another footnote:

"... while human babies first emerge facedown, they rotate at the shoulder while they come out so that by the time they are fully out of the canal, they are in the faceup position of the Maize God on this pot."

The picture on the pot:

Explanation:

"... One [pot] has a black background showing that the action occurs in the lightless time before First Father raised the sky. The narrative scene includes three episodes from the story. In one, the Jaguar and Stingray Paddlers paddle a canoe carrying the Maize God to the place of Creation. He carries a seed bag on his chest so that he can plant the seeds that are the Pleiades when he raises the Wakah-Chan, or as Enrique Florescano suggested to us, so that he can use them to form the flesh of human beings after Creation is done.

Below the canoe, the reclining figure of the Maize God emerges from the mouth of a Vision Serpent in a position that mimics exactly the emergence of a child from his mother's birth canal.

The third episode shows two young women helping him dress after his successful resurrection. Here is the rebirth of the Maize God into the Primordial Sea. Both the birth and the dressing scenes occur underwater."

The turning around of the baby from face down into face up should be - according to the Polynesian mind - a reversal of the death, when someone falls on his face.

Several possible leads come from this, e.g. how in Aa1-9 the face continues forward, though the 'joint' (or lower body) has changed into reverse orientation:

Aa1-9 Aa1-10 Aa1-11 Aa1-12
e moa te herehua ka hora ka tetea ihe kuukuu ma te maro ki te

Does it mean that the 2nd half of the year is being born?

Face down and lower body still upwards (on the other hand) should mean 'death on its way':